Unfortunately, excitement isn't what sells you. As the expert might know really well
what they need to solve the problem that they have, but they're not going
to get excited about something if they don't think it's even relevant to them.
So instead, your launch is about educating them, educating them through the magician's
gap. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I
read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and did all the courses,
but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that my business had its
first million dollars. Here, imperfect action is about doing things before you're ready,
prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not
sure you're doing it right. On this show, you can expect mindset advice,
actionable marketing tips and strategies to build a business that brings you more profit,
more freedom, and even more joy. Are you on the list to
get my daily businesses? Every day, I'll send you a bite sized prompt
designed to help you grow your business in a more intentional way. Sign up
at Steph Taylor dot Co, forward slash DBB, or at the link in
the show notes. Hey, Welcome back to in Perfect Action. This is
episode eight hundred and ten. Today I am sharing the seven big mistakes that
can cost you sales in a launch. So in particular, I'm talking about
launches of online courses, group programs, and memberships, but this can apply
to essentially any kind of digital product that you are launching. So mistake number
one that will cost you sales in a launch is investing so much time into
creating the product before you've even sold the first one. I see this all
the time. Somebody will go and they'll start creating a course, and they'll
go off into their course creation cave and they think they know what their audience
wants, so they go and they start creating module, and then they think
about, oh, maybe I should include this thing, maybe I should include
this thing, and they end up going down all of these rabbit holes and
it ends up taking them six months, a year, two years to create
this course. Then they come out of the creation cave and they think,
great, I'm going to launch it. I'm going to put it on my
website, I'm going to put it out to my audience and they're going to
be so excited about it. And that never happens. They put it out
there and it's crickets. And that's because they spend all of their time creating
this incredible product, but they've spent no time launching it. And the only
way to test where the people will actually pay for it is to actually ask
them to pay for it. And I've talked about this previously on the podcast.
Waitlists aren't a great predictor of who is going to buy in your launch.
People telling you that they want what you are creating isn't a great predictor
either, because they might want something, but they might not want it badly
enough to go and spend money on it. They might be telling you,
yeah, of course I want that, and they're doing it because they are
not wanting to hurt your feelings, or they're wanting to be nice, they're
wanting to be supportive. I also believe that if you spend a lot of
time creating your product, you're going to be much less likely to be open
to pivoting it. So if you spend two years creating an online course and
then you put it out to your audience and they're like, Oh, I
really want to learn this in a group program format, you're now going to
be much less likely to change it, or they say, well, we
already know what's in module one and two, but we just want what's module
three onwards. You're much less likely now to go and scrap module one and
two and change the messaging around your course because you've invested so much time,
you are so invested in the outcome. Mistake Number two that hurts your digital
product launches is not doing enough of the audience research or not doing the right
audience research. Asking your audience would you buy this is very different to asking
your audience, what are you struggling with? What would the dream solution look
like? How can I help you right? One of them is a simple
yes or no question, and they might give you what you want to hear
because they don't want to hurt your feelings, whereas the other one gives you
real insight into what's going on in their brains, what they need from you,
how you can help them, how you can create a digital product that
solves whatever they are struggling with. And maybe you've surveyed your audience, but
you've never gone very deep. You've never done one on one zoom calls to
find out what's really going on in their mind. You as the expert,
know what somebody needs, and you're going to go and create your course program
or your membership, giving them what you know they need. But then they
think they need something completely different. So if you go out there and you
sell them what you know they need, they're going to be like, no,
thank you, I don't don't need that, I need this other thing.
For example, with offer less sell more, I know my audience needs
a strategic office suite to make more consistent sales. I know that is the
solution to making more consistent sales, but my audience thinks that they just need
to reach more people to make more sales. Okay, so this is the
magician's gap. This is really what their magician's gap is. In essence,
is the difference between what you know that they need and what they think that
they need. Mistake number three in a launch is trying to get your audience
excited about what you are selling and thinking that this excitement will be what sells,
and unfortunately excitement isn't what sells. You as the expert, might know
really well what they need to solve the problem that they have, but they're
not going to get excited about something if they don't think it's even relevant to
them. So instead, your launch is about educating them, educating them through
the magician's gap. And this is something we go really deep into inside Launch
Magic, and I go into the basics of the magician's gap inside Module one
of Launch Magic. And in early June, I'm running an exclusive free event
for people who are on the Launch Magic weightlist only where I'll be teaching Module
one live in a zoom call. So if you are not on the waitlist,
make sure you get on the waitlist. DM me on Instagram. I'm
there at stephtaylor dot co. Send me the word magic, just magic,
and I will automatically add you to the waitlist. Or if you're not on
Instagram, you can get on the waitlist at stephtaylor dot co. Slash Magic
with offer less sel more. The magician's gap here is me showing them how
reaching more people isn't the solution to making more consistent sales and illustrating how they're
offer suite is the solution. Okay. The next mistake people make when launching
their digital product is going straight to ever What do I mean by evergreen?
So when I say evergreen, that means doors are always open, it's always
available to buy. Most people think of Evergreen as just putting it on their
website and leaving there. But this doesn't work because there's no deadline for somebody
to buy, and without a deadline, they're going to keep putting off buying
for as long as possible, especially in the current the current environment, I've
noticed that there have been more people sitting on the fence of my launches until
the very last minute and then buying right before doors close, and that's because
they're taking longer to make a decision, they're being more discerning about what they're
buying and having a deadline. It's not about pressuring somebody into making a decision,
but it's about saying, hey, you need to decide by this date.
Are you in or are you out? You can't keep procrastinating it,
putting it off because you're not going to have more time or more money or
whatever thing you think you're going to have next week that you don't already have
this week. Evergreen also doesn't really work, or going straight to Evergreen doesn't
really work because you're only getting a small number of people through at a time.
You're not getting one hundred people through your webinar. You're not getting fifty
people through your webinar. You're not getting fifty people looking at your sales page.
You're not really getting meaningful stats or feedback on what needs tweaking. Okay,
if you can get a huge chunk of people through in one go,
now you know, Okay, this webinar is not converting well. Or lots
of people are signing up for the webinar, but nobody's showing up. Lots
of people are looking at the sales page, but nobody's signing up. And
then we can look at those stats, and we can look at the feedback
that they give us and implement that to make tweaks in the future. Another
reason why it doesn't work is because most of the time I have noticed when
people say, oh, I'm putting this on Evergreen, it literally means they
are putting it on their website and leaving it there, and there's no sales
process. It's a sales page and a checkout and that's it. There's nowhere
for them to get their objections addressed. There's no actual sales process. There's
no way that you are bridging that magician's gap for them. So they're not
going to be ready to buy when they land on the sales page. A
much more effective option is to live launch it a few times before putting it
on Evergreen and translating that live launch sales process into a fully automated version of
the same process. Okay, the next mistake people make with launching is only
launching their product once. Your course, or your program, or your membership
is an asset that can generate cash for your business over and over and over
again. Launching it once and then putting it on your website for people to
buy. Launching it once and leaving doors open for eternity. That usually doesn't
generate what sales the way that you intend it to, and it's probably because
you don't have much of a sales process behind it. Now, a launch
is a sen actually a sales process. That's what it really is. It
sounds so un sexy, but that is what a launch is, from start
to finish, moving somebody from where they are to where they need to be
to be ready to buy. And yeah, you might do this with your
existing audience with one launch, but what about new people who come into your
audience after that? How are you moving them through that gap. The next
mistake people make in their launches is not having a sales process all right,
Now, your entire sales process starts like sixty to ninety days before doors open.
When I talk about your launch starts sixty to ninety days before doors open.
That's not you talking about your product for sixty to ninety days. That
is your free content. Your free content is the start of your sales process.
And then you might have a webinar where you're still bridging that gap.
You will have cart open emails, you will have a sales page, a
checkout. Your sales process is that entire process from your free content through until
they've purchased. And that is what makes up your lawn launch. It's not
just your sales page and checkout and a whole lot of hype building, but
it's actually where when you're talking about it, when you're talking about your product,
where are you sending them? How are you making sure that they've had
that they've learned all of the things they need to know before they'll be ready
to buy. And then the last mistake I see people making with their launches
is waiting until they have a bigger audience. Now you're not launching just once.
You are launching the same thing over and over again, so you don't
need to save up your audience until it's big enough to have one big launch.
Your first few launches probably won't be huge unless you already have a large
audience. But this is a good thing because it's like learning to ride a
bike in your driveway rather than on a main road. Your first launch can
be an experiment. You gather feedback, and then you implement that in the
next launch, and then again you launch again and again and again. And
this takes so much pressure off launching because it doesn't have to be this must
succeed at all costs kind of endeavor, but rather it's a learning experience that
gets easier each time, that grows each time. And that's really those are
the biggest mistakes that I'm seeing at the moment. People are making these mistakes.
Lots of people are creating epic online courses, but just because it's an
epic online course, just because it's the most incredible group program or such a
great membership with loads of value in it, that doesn't mean people are going
to buy it unless you can sell it. And we're not naturally taught how
to sell, and selling doesn't come to us very easily for a lot of
us, and that's where launching comes in, like it's such a huge part
of it is selling, which I know feels really hard for a lot of
us. So that is it for today's episode. Now, if you are
thinking about launching sometimes soon, doors are opening to launch Magic on the thirteenth
of June, which is coming up real soon. We only run it twice
a year and you can go and find out everything you need to know.
Jump on the waitlist because we have an early bird bonus. You can find
that at stephtaylor dot co, slash Magic, or dm me on Instagram.
I'm there at stephtaylor dot co. Send me the word magic and I will
automatically add you to the waitlist. All right, that is it for today's
episode. Thank you so much for listening. Catch you next time.